1. Field of the Invention
Equipment and a process for wrapping cigars wherein bound bunches are moved continuously in a direction perpendicular to their longitudinal axes while being rotated and while wrappers are moved continuously relative to the bunches and are spirally wrapped about the same and about the rounded tapered ends thereof, the wrappers experiencing changes in position as they are applied to the mouth ends of the bunches so as to be smoothly placed thereon.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Present day commercial cigar wrapping machinery is semiautomatic in operation. An operator running such a machine applies a wrapper to a cutting die surface from which a wrapper carried picks up the die cut wrapper with a controlled vacuum and brings the wrapper to a station where a bound cigar bunch has been mechanically placed. The machine spins the bunch about a fixed axis of rotation while the wrapper carrier manipulates the wrapper so that it is spirally wrapped about the spinning bunch and, toward the end of the wrapping, gyrates the wrapper as it is applied to the tapered mouth end of the bunch. The wrapper carrier moves back and forth between the station where it picks up a wrapper and the station where it applies the wrapper to the spinning bunch. After wrapping, the cigar is mechanically removed from the wrapping station.
Because of the several stop-and-start motions, the shifting of the wrapper, the bunch and the cigar between various locations on an intermittent basis, and the gyrations of the wrapper carrier, production on such machines currently is restricted to about twenty wrapped cigars per minute.